GUILDERLAND — One or two picketers stand holding signs aloft at the bridge on Route 146 that leads to the Northeastern Industrial Park in Guilderland Center. That’s all there is to show that Guilderland is now linked to the ongoing battle between Honeywell Aerospace and its locked-out United Auto Worker employees.

According to picketer Mike Iannone, the union’s financial secretary, Honeywell has rented a warehouse inside the industrial park “in secret,” so that the company can pick up and deliver goods without having to ask truck drivers to cross a picket line. Many truck drivers are members of unions, Iannone said, and will not cross a picket line like the one at Honeywell’s Green Island plant.

Representatives of management of the Northeastern Industrial Park in Guilderland Center said that they could not divulge the names of any renters.

The Green Island union — United Auto Workers Local 1508 — learned of the Guilderland Center warehouse, Iannone said, when “a couple of people on the picket line followed trucks” away from the plant, and they ended up at the industrial park. Also, he said, one of the locked-out workers has started a part-time job that involves making deliveries to the industrial park, and he “nosed around.”

Asked if Honeywell is renting a warehouse in Guilderland Center, national corporate spokesman Scott Sayres, who is based in Phoenix, Arizona, said, “The name doesn’t sound familiar to me; I’m not aware of it.” Asked more generally if the company is renting a warehouse to allow deliveries and pickups without a picket line, he said that the company does “have a contingency plan in place for cross-docking, or warehousing, to make sure that our supplies and shipments can get out on time.” He did not know the specific name of the site, he said, and had not heard the name Guilderland Center, but said that the warehouse is in the Albany area.

Iannone said that the demonstration is going well, and while he is sure that non-union truckers are still visiting the Honeywell warehouse, union truckers will not drop off or pick up anything while picketers are out.

Honeywell Aerospace union workers at two plants, in Green Island and also in South Bend, Indiana, which make brake linings for airplanes, have been locked out since May 9, when the deadline for agreeing on a new contract passed. Local 1508 President Tim Vogt explained the chain of events this way: The company offered new conditions that, as he put it, “took away everything we had.” The matter was put to a vote that weekend because of the deadline, and voted down by the workers. At midnight Sunday night — Mother’s Day, Vogt pointed out — workers were allowed to start work and turn on all the machines after the weekend lull, inspiring hope that perhaps there would be no lockdown. But six hours in, “as soon as everything was up and running,” Vogt said, the company told all the workers to leave and replaced them with temporary employees. Sayres confirmed the essence of that description.

“I think they kind of used us to get everything started up after the weekend,” said Vogt.

The lockout from several perspectives

Iannone retired from a position as a machine operator at Green Island in 2003 but remains active with the union.

He says that about a month before the current contract was up, the company brought in 40 or so people “to watch everybody work for a month.” Each worker was assigned one person who job-shadowed him or her, he said. “They kept assuring everybody, ‘They’re just working, don’t worry about it, it has nothing to do with the contract.’”

Vogt said that Honeywell has locked out workers at other plants in recent years, and that he had asked managers directly if they would be locking out the Green Island workers, and had been told they would not.

Workers were wary, but, “Historically, we’ve worked without a contract in place because a contract had expired and we were in talks,” he said. “This is brand new.”

This time, employees went in for the first shift on the first day after the new contract’s deadline had passed, and about six hours in, Iannone said, Honeywell announced that they “had five minutes to get whatever they wanted out of their lockers and to get off the premises.”

They were replaced by 40 or so workers who Iannone says are from Strom Engineering, a company that provides what he calls “scab employees” to cover for union workers during negotiations.

The person who answered the phone at Strom Engineering said that she could “neither confirm nor deny” that the replacement workers were Strom’s, but according to the company’s website, one service that Strom offers is industrial strike replacement staffing. A news release posted on Strom Engineering’s website lauds the role that temporary workers have played in helping Honeywell to “stay productive” during the lockout.

Iannone charges that, since the previous contract, Honeywell has “started to play hardball with anyplace that has decent wages.”

From the very beginning of the negotiation process, he said, “The company handed us a ‘last, best, and final offer.’”

Honeywell spokesman Sayres said, “We believe that the union is ignoring some of the stark economic realities currently facing the aviation industry. Since 2015, the industry worldwide has lost approximately 37,000 jobs.”

Workers at the Green Island plant earn, Sayres said, about 27 percent more than other production workers in the Green Island area.

The average wage for a union-represented Green Island Honeywell employee is about $56,000, Sayres said, but the total annual package, including overtime and benefits, rises to about $85,000. One of every three bargaining-unit members, he said, earned $90,000 or more.

Albany County Legislator Douglas A. Bullock, an Albany Democrat representing District 7, said Honeywell Aerospace is “on the public dole,” since it receives military funding from the government. Bullock, a longtime labor leader and activist, said that Honeywell’s contracts have “guaranteed profits” and are “some of the most lucrative contracts you can get.”

According to a Honeywell “Investor Fact Sheet,” Honeywell Aerospace revenues amount to $10 billion annually, and half of those are government contracts; the other half are commercial. More specifically, 30 percent of the company’s contracts are related to United States defense; 10 percent are international defense; and 10 percent are government service.

Bullock said that he encourages people to support locked-out workers with a honk, a wave, or a cup of coffee, and that unions are important, and should be valued even by workers who do not belong to a union, because the wages they negotiate “set the standards for the industry.” When union wages are higher, he said, “everybody benefits,” including non-union workers.

Changing conditions

Iannone says that the company has “devastated” employee health-care plans by creating a “very high deductible,” and wants to eliminate pensions.

“I have fireproof lungs,” he said, noting that he worked with asbestos for 30 years at the plant, which formerly produced brake linings for cars. It now produces only aircraft brake linings, and no longer uses asbestos.

Much of the work nowadays involves grinding metals in water, Iannone said. He argued that this too has its own health risks involving particulates that are produced by the process. Most employees, he said, do not wear respirators.

The health risks of these processes, Iannone said, were “part of the consideration for why we would have decent wages and health care.”

He says that the company wants to “decimate” worker health-care plans. As examples of specifics, he said that, under the newly proposed plan, workers have to pay $5,000 worth of medical expenses out-of-pocket before the company starts to cover anything.

He also said that he used to have a physical exam every year, but that, after he retired, Honeywell stopped providing him that benefit.

He says this is problematic because health-related problems from working with asbestos often show up years later.

“If I wanted a physical now,” Iannone said, “I could get one, but they wouldn’t pay for it.”

Asked about Iannone’s complaints, Sayres said, “I’d have to look at his plan, what he’s on. As you probably know from your own health-care coverage, there’s a number of a different choices. I’d have no way to say whether he was right or wrong without knowing the specifics to it.”

Vogt said that the conditions for active and retired workers were slightly different, and that he thought that a family’s deductible for an active worker was $3,000. The out-of-pocket expense maximum is so high, he said, that workers with everyday health problems could never reach it, with the result that workers simply can’t afford to go to the doctor.

The company emphasizes that other local unions within Honeywell have accepted similar conditions, Vogt said. “But just because it’s the norm doesn’t make it right.”

Sayres wrote in an email that the company’s proposal includes caps on health-care premium increases, and limits on deductible and out-of-pocket increases, and that the company has committed to contributing to employee Health Savings Accounts annually for three years.

Iannone also said that the company wants to do away with the pension system and replace it with “a 401(k) only.”

Sayres said, when asked about this, that the company is “freezing the legacy pension formula,” that the amounts employees made in the past will still be there and will still be accessible, but that employees will not be accumulating more pension benefits in the future.

“The difference is,” he said, “instead of contributing to their pension fund, if they want, they’ll be contributing to their 401(k) funds.”

All-or-nothing deal

The contracts at South Bend and Green Island are linked, both Sayres and Iannone agree, in an all-or-nothing deal. The plants at the two sites share a “master contract,” Iannone said, that they negotiate together, and each also has its own local contract that it must negotiate with the company. Agreement with the company must be reached on all three of these before workers from either plant will be allowed back to work.

At the most recent negotiation, Green Island workers voted to accept the conditions from Honeywell. They are still locked out because South Bend workers have not agreed.